You are describing an open source project where each member "who is
interested" puts in his/her 2 cents and the core group decides what gets
committed.
This is difficult to fund with taxpayers' money since there is no one
who can be held accountable and no organization who can commit to
delivering a pre-defined deliverable. (01)I suspect that while we wait for some rich, disinterested party to come
up with $1,000 per item (number tossed about earlier) with no concern
for the scope, budget, timeline, qualification of participants, etc. we
will produce a lot of subject specific ontologies that have to be
integrated. (02)The GoodRelations ontology will likely be very helpful to me at some
point and I am going to have to accept what compromises are part of the
bargain just as I do when I select an open source package as the basis
of an application that I am building. (03)I know that if I pick up a "foundation ontology" that includes a
geographical section, I am going to have to expend some effort on it if
I want to include every town in Canada where my client has a store. If
it was prepared by a European or Asian group, I may have more to do than
if the project leader is from Transport Canada or CN Rail. (04)I doubt if the GoodRelations ontology and anyone's geographical ontology
is going to cause me a lot of integration problems. (05)OTOH I have done enough with open source to understand that the
selection of components has a direct bearing on the amount of work that
you have to do and you have to do your due diligence carefully.
We will depend on the groups preparing the ontologies to do their jobs
well and to form alliances with other groups to deal with conflicts and
boundary conditions.
We will depend on forums like this to do the peer review and to provide
references of combinations that work and ones that do not. (06)Eventually, "ontology stacks" will arise similar to LAMP, where there is
a general agreement that the ontologies are "compatible" to some well
understood level. (07)At least I hope that this will be true. (08)Ron (09)Patrick Cassidy wrote:
> Ron -
> I thought the point was clear, but I will clarify anyway:
> [RW} > I can see how this group would collapse into jurisdictional disputes.
>
>> Who gets to define the medical ontology - drug companies, medical
>> equipment companies, HMOs, hospitals, WHO, etc.?
>>
> Any member of the project who is interested. Membership in any working
> group should be fully open - no one can feel 'left out' of anything.
> You also seem to focus on a lot of specialized concepts, but that is not
> the purpose of developing a common foundation ontology. A foundation
> ontology will contain representations of the most basic primitive concepts
> with which all the specialized concepts can be created as combinations of
> the basic concepts. That is the path to interoperability - agree on a basic
> set of concepts with which you can specify all the specialized concepts of
> interest to you, and in that manner everyone can define the specialized
> concepts however they consider it appropriate, using the primitives that are
> agreed on. By using the same set of primitives it does not matter how much
> people disagree on the logical representation of any specialized term; it is
> the logical representation that specifies the intended meaning, and
> different representations of a specific term by different groups are not the
> same concept in a merged ontology of two specialized groups: they will have
> different names (different namespace prefixes for those terms) and different
> logical structure. The relations between the two - similarities and
> differences - will be immediately evident from a comparison of the logical
> structures. If the logical structures are different, the terms mean
> different things. If they are intended to represent the same instances,
> then the two different definitions constitute different theories of that
> type of entity, but this does not create a logical contradiction within the
> merged ontology, because the different theories are isolated within
> different contexts in the merged ontology. The two systems can still
> communicate, but in communication the fact that they have different theories
> will have to be taken into account, and the differences will need to be
> isolated in order for comparisons to be made. If this sounds complicated,
> it is only what is absolutely necessary for accurate communication: the
> automated systems are *forced* to do what people *should* do when
> communicating - precisely define terms and account for different
> assumptions. It is also a mechanism for recognizing different assumptions,
> and can lead to one or both disagreeing groups to change their definitions.
>
> Ontologies that are developed separately cannot be merged into a single
> consistent ontology without an effort comparable to the effort of building a
> new similar ontology from scratch. This is a consequence of the need for
> the merging agent (person or machine) to actually **understand** the
> meanings of the terms to be merged. Machines can't, so it is necessarily a
> labor-intensive task for one or more experts. From observing ontology work
> for over a dozen years, it is abundantly clear to me that waiting for a
> common ontology to emerge from multiple specialized ontologies is hopeless
> unless a properly funded task finds the common basic terms and relates the
> different ontologies through those terms. Funding a common foundation
> ontology is unavoidable, and the only question in my mind is how many
> trillions of dollars will be wasted before some agency finally takes that
> insignificant financial risk.
>
> Pat
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> MICRA, Inc.
> 908-561-3416
> cell: 908-565-4053
> cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ron Wheeler
>> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 7:22 PM
>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Web shortcomings [was Re: ANN:
>> GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce]
>>
>> Patrick Cassidy wrote:
>>
>>> John,
>>> Concerning your point:
>>>
>>>
>>>> The best designs are developed by small groups. After they have
>>>> proved their value on at least one important application, a
>>>>
>> committee
>>
>>>> can evaluate them, note missing or inadequate features, and polish
>>>>
>> up
>>
>>>> the details.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> This may well be true of foundation ontologies, though a
>>>
>> foundation
>>
>>> ontology is different enough from other artifacts to give one doubts
>>>
>> about
>>
>>> any analogies. Even if it is true, it is not inconsistent with
>>>
>> development
>>
>>> by a large group (50-100 participants), since each part of the
>>>
>> ontology
>>
>>> beyond the top level or two is likely to be the focus of a small
>>>
>> subgroup,
>>
>>> and the group as a whole would serve the function of the "committee"
>>>
>> to be
>>
>>> sure that the work of the subgroups integrates with everything else
>>>
>> and can
>>
>>> handle the applications of interest to the whole group.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I can see how this group would collapse into jurisdictional disputes.
>> Who gets to define the medical ontology - drug companies, medical
>> equipment companies, HMOs, hospitals, WHO, etc.?
>> Software engineering belongs to who?
>> What about process control - Equipment suppliers, system integrators,
>> engineers?
>> Transportation - carriers, travel agents, shipping companies,
>> governments?
>> Homeland Security - can you imagine the FBI adopting an ontology set up
>> by Scotland Yard or the KGB or the Chinese Army let alone the CIA or
>> Pentagon? If the FBI went along what would be the resistance from state
>> and municipal police?
>>
>> How is the funding to be divided up? So much per term and relationship
>> defined?
>>
>> What about the funding agencies/companies - do they get a final say?
>> What if the ontology does not meet their needs, will they continue to
>> fund it once they realize that their needs are not being met?
>>
>> What are the language(computer and human) choices for expressing
>> ontologies?
>> Who is responsible for translation between computer languages and
>> between national languages?
>>
>> My ontology for process control or homeland security could (and should)
>> be very different from someone else's since we will view objects and
>> relationships differently and will need different results.
>>
>> I think that ontologies will be developed as small packages and
>> application designers will have pick the namespaces that they require
>> for their needs.
>>
>> Sometimes this will result in new merged ontologies being published.
>> Some ontologies will be abandoned as better ones appear.
>>
>> The focus should be on identifying ontologies as they emerge,
>> commenting
>> on them and providing peer review to improve quality.
>> The development of tools to support this process and the use of the
>> ontologies as they arise is a much better place for funding to be
>> focused.
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>> Pat
>>>
>>> Patrick Cassidy
>>> MICRA, Inc.
>>> 908-561-3416
>>> cell: 908-565-4053
>>> cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>>>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
>>>> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 2:20 AM
>>>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>>>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Semantic Web shortcomings [was Re: ANN:
>>>> GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce]
>>>>
>>>> Ron,
>>>>
>>>> Just a comment about standards:
>>>>
>>>> > My understanding is that most of the "best" standards have come
>>>> > about through a consensus between the major commercial players
>>>> > with the active (frequently funded) participation of the academic
>>>> > community.
>>>>
>>>> The important caveat is that committees are terrible at design,
>>>> but they're very good at evaluation. There are many proverbs and
>>>> anecdotes about that point:
>>>>
>>>> - Too many cooks spoil the broth.
>>>>
>>>> - A camel is a horse designed by committee. (This is a slur on
>>>> camels, which are very well designed for their environment.)
>>>>
>>>> - Fred Brooks' _Mythical Man Month_, in which he observes that
>>>> OS/360 would have been far better designed by a group of
>>>> about a dozen designers instead of 150.
>>>>
>>>> The best designs are developed by small groups. After they have
>>>> proved their value on at least one important application, a
>>>>
>> committee
>>
>>>> can evaluate them, note missing or inadequate features, and polish
>>>>
>> up
>>
>>>> the details.
>>>>
>>>> A prime example is FORTRAN, which was designed by a group of
>>>> "academics"
>>>> who happened to be employed by IBM (at a time when IBM had a
>>>>
>> sufficient
>>
>>>> monopoly to throw money at researchers who weren't making a
>>>>
>> measurable
>>
>>>> contribution to the bottom line).
>>>>
>>>> There were a few programming languages implemented before FORTRAN,
>>>> but they were all very inefficient (at a time when computers were
>>>> a few thousand times slower than today's cell phones). The FORTRAN
>>>> group (of about half a dozen people led by John Backus) set out to
>>>> design a language and compiler that would produce code that was
>>>>
>> close
>>
>>>> to the efficiency of code produced by a decent assembly-language
>>>> programmer. And they succeeded.
>>>>
>>>> After a couple of iterations by IBM, FORTRAN IV became a very good,
>>>> very usable, and very efficient language for numeric computation.
>>>> The ANSI and later ISO standards bodies took over. Over fifty years
>>>> later, they are still producing new revisions that preserve much
>>>> of the original core language. Today, FORTRAN is still the most
>>>> efficient and most widely used language for high-speed numeric
>>>> computation.
>>>>
>>>> For some related thoughts, see the "Law of Standards," which I
>>>> formulated in 1991:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/standard.htm
>>>>
>>>> And by the way, the original WWW was designed by a small group,
>>>> but the Semantic Web was designed by a very large committee.
>>>>
>>>> John Sowa
>>>>
>>>>
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